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Jewish Studies - Event Archive |
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Thursday, April 17, 2008
"Caught in the Crossfire: Hollywood 1947, Communist Conspiracy or Jewish Plot?"
J. Hoberman, senior film critic, the Village Voice
In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee initiated a political purge of the American movie industry. The widespread belief that Hollywood was a predominantly Jewish enterprise was dramatized in a spectacle pitting (mainly) Jewish producers against Jewish (and philo-Semitic) screenwriters.
No less significant was the FBI's interest in two recent movies, Crossfire and Body and Soul - one dealing with
anti-Semitism, the other with a Jewish boxer's rise and
fall - both largely produced by Hollywood communists.
J. Hoberman is the senior film critic at the Village Voice,where he recently celebrated the 30th anniversary of his first movie review. He has published in journals ranging from the New German Critique to High Times and is the author of nine books, including Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds and The Red Atlantis: Communist Culture in the Absence of Communism. Currently, he is working on the prequel to his most recent book The Dream Life: Movies, Media and the Mythology of the Sixties.
In 2003, Hoberman co-curated an exhibit at The Jewish Museum in New York City: "Entertaining America: Jews, Movies and Broadcasting." An adjunct professor of cinema at the Cooper Union since 1990, he has lectured widely and also taught at NYU and Harvard. Hoberman's lecture is sponsored by the Smith College Jewish Studies Program, the UMass-Amherst Department of Judaic & Near Eastern Studies,
Office of Jewish Affairs, and DEFA Film Library and the Posen Foundation Program for the Study of Secular Jewish History and Cultures at Hampshire College.
Time: 4:30 pm
Location: University of Massachusetts - click for details |
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Sunday, April 13, 2008
Film: 'Mechina: A Preparation' - part of the Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival
In Israel, military service is mandatory for all teenagers after high
school graduation. Living with her cousin Amitai and his five friends as they prepare for their army service, film director Maital Guttman
uncovers the complexity of being young and idealistic in a time of
war, as the teens transition from students to soldiers in this documentary film. Film Talk with director Maital Guttman.
Time: 4:00 pm
Location: Hillyer, Graham Hall, Brown Fine Arts Center |
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Friday, April 11, 2008
"Wroclaw / Breslau: Poles, Germans, Jews and Their City"
A conference on the history and culture of this “multi-ethnic” city – from the 1800s though the Holocaust and the postwar – and its legacy in a new Europe. The conference will take place from 9:30 to 5 pm at the National Yiddish Book Center (Hampshire College campus). See the complete schedule here. For more information, contact the conference organizers, Dr. Jonathan Skolnik jskolnik@german.umass.edu or Prof. Jakub Tyszkiewicz jatysz@wp.pl |
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Thursday April 10, 2008 (UMass event)
Yiddish Theatre:
A New Look at its 19th-century Context
Professor Klaus Hödl
The modern Yiddish theatre came into being in Romania in 1876. Its “founder,” Abraham Goldfaden – as well as other dramatists – wanted it to convey middle-class Western European standards of education [Bildung] and Enlightenment to “uneducated” Jews. In this sense, the Yiddish stage was designed as an institution for and by Jews. The notion of the Yiddish theatre as the expression of a purely “internal” Jewish world is still widespread. Upon closer examination, however, this view must be contested: many dramas performed on the Yiddish stage were translations of pieces by Shakespeare, Molière, Grillparzer, and others. The audience consisted not only of Jews but of non-Jews as well, and sometimes even the actors were non-Jews. Thus, rather than an expression of exclusively Jewish culture, Yiddish theater was a space for cultural exchange between Jews and non-Jews.
Klaus Hödl is the Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Graz (Austria). Sponsored by the UMass-Amherst German and Scandinavian Studies Program and Department of Judaic and Near East Studies and the National Yiddish Book Center. For more information, please contact Dr. Jonathan Skolnik at jskolnik@german.umass.edu
Time: 5:30 pm
Location: The National Yiddish Book Center |
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Saturday, April 5, 2008
Film: 'Bad Faith' - part of the Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival
Clara and Ishmael are gorgeous, happy, in love and in Paris. How nice is that? Like many cosmopolitan Parisian couples, the fact that she’s
Jewish and he’s Muslim barely crosses the minds of these oh-so-secular lovebirds...until Clara announces that she's pregnant. That's
when the troubles start in this charming and timely romantic comedy. French with subtitles. Film Talk with Rabbi Lev Baesh of InterfaithFamily.Com.
Time: 8:15 pm
Location: Seelye Hall 106 |
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Friday and Saturday, April 4-5, 2008 (Amherst College Event)
"The Other in Second Temple The Other in Second Temple Judaism"
Longtime colleagues and students of Professor Collins will explore a topic that embraces many of the issues and areas within biblical and hellenistic Jewish writings that Professor Collins has illuminated during his long and distinguished career. A native of Ireland, Professor Collins was a professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Chicago from 1991 until his arrival at Yale Divinity School in 2000. He previously taught at the University of Notre Dame. He has published widely on the subjects of apocalypticism, wisdom, Hellenistic Judaism, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. His books include the commentary on Daniel in the Hermeneia series; The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls; Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age; The Apocalyptic Imagination; Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora; and most recently, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible with CD-ROM; Does the Bible Justify Violence?; Jewish Cult and Hellenistic Culture; Encounters with Biblical Theology; and The Bible after Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age. He is co-editor of the three-volume Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism and has participated in the editing of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He is editor of a monograph series for Brill titled Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplements and of the journal Dead Sea Discoveries, and has served as editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature and as president of both the Catholic Biblical Association and the Society of Biblical Literature.
Time: Complete program here
Location: Cole Assembly Room, Converse Hall, Amherst College |
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Monday, March 31, 2008
“The Pursuit of Secular Heresy: Neoconservatism's Campaign against Jewish Communism”
Nancy Sinkoff, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History, Rutgers University
Nancy Sinkoff is author of Out of the Shtetl: Making Jews Modern in the
Polish Borderlands (Brown Judaic Studies, 2004), for which she was
awarded a Korot Foundation Subvention Publication Prize. She is currently working
on an intellectual biography of historian Lucy S. Dawidowicz entitled "Seeing Red: The Political Life of Lucy S. Dawidowicz." In summer 2008,
her introduction, "'Yidishkayt' and the Making of Lucy S. Dawidowicz,"
will accompany a reissue of Dawidowicz’s memoir, From That Place and
Time: A Memoir, 1938-1947. Her lecture will focus on the secularization
of the typology of heresy exemplified by the campaign against Jewish Communism in the post-war period.
Time: 12:15 pm
Location: Neilson Browsing Room
Sponsors: The Programs in Jewish Studies and the Department of History at Smith College. This lecture is part of the 2007-2008 Lecture Series in Jewish Studies: "Passages Home: Between History and Memory in Modern Jewish Culture. |
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Tuesday, March 25, 2008 (Hampshire College event)
"A Pigeon and a Boy"
A
talk about war and love by
internationally acclaimed Israeli author, Meir Shalev
Israel’s most celebrated novelist, Meir Shalev was born in 1948 in Nahalal, Israel’s first moshav. He is a bestselling author in Israel, Holland, and Germany, and he has been translated into over 20 languages. Now Shalev is making his impact felt on the American literary scene. His books include Fontanelle, Alone In the Desert, But A Few Days, and Esau. Russian Romance (The Blue Mountain) is one of the of the top 5 bestsellers in Israeli publishing history. Shalev’s writing is often compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez for his ability to “create worlds inhabited by the richness of invention and obsessiveness of dreams... He delivers both startling imagery and passionate, original characters whose destinies we follow through love, loss, laughter and death.” (The New York Times Book Review). Shalev is the recipient of the Juliet Club Prize (Italy), The Prime Minister's Prize (Israel), The Chiavari (Italy), The Entholomogical Prize (Israel), The Wizo Prize in France, Israel and Italy, and The Brenner Prize of 2006—the highest Israeli literary recognition awarded for his last novel, A Pigeon and a Boy, published in the United States by Random House (2007). He studied Psychology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and produced and hosted several radio and television programs. He has written eight children’s books, as well as three collections of essays. Meir Shalev is also a columnist with the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot. He lives in Jerusalem and in the north of Israel with his wife and children, where he is a motorcycle and jeep enthusiast. ABOUT A PIGEON AND A BOY (Random House 2007):
Tour guide Yair Mendelson tells about his surprising conception and birth, about his mother, who gave him a sum of money allowing him to build a new home and leave his wife, and about the woman contractor who renovates his house and becomes his lover. Concurrently, he unravels a wondrous story of love that evolves between two handlers of homing pigeons that blossoms in the early 40’s and lasts until Israel’s War of Independence, from the pigeon that carries the first love letter between the two fourteen—year olds to the pigeon that alights from the midst of the battle of Jerusalem, carrying the final letter, with it's most unusual content that is unparalleled in the history of homing pigeons and in the annals of literature. A Pigeon And A Boy, Shalev’s sixth novel, is a captivating and moving story of a boy and his home, a nest and a girl, a pigeon and a baby. A tale of wandering passion and the return home—whether by humans or winged creatures. Made possible by generous grants from the Harold Grinspoon Foundation and Posen Foundation Program for the Study of Secular Jewish History and Cultures. Sponsored by the Hampshire College Spiritual Life Center, Jewish Studies, and the School for Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies. Contacts: Rabbi Steven Nathan (snathan@hampshire.edu) and Rachel Rubinstein (rrHACU@hampahire.edu)
Time: 5:30 pm
Location: Main Lecture Hall, Franklin Patterson Hall,
Hampshire College
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Monday, March 24, 2008
Film: 'Praying in Her Own Voice: The Struggle of the Women of the Wall for Freedom of Worship in Israel' - part of the Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival
An outcry protesting religious coercion, this 2007 film documents the courageous struggle of Women of the Wall for the right
to wear prayer shawls and read aloud from a Torah scroll – acts that
Jewish religious law permits women to perform but is fiercely
objected by the orthodox establishment in Israel. Film Talk moderated by Professor Martha Ackelsburg
Time: 7:00 pm
Location: McConnell Hall 103 (view campus map) |
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Monday, March 3, 2008
“Hurting ‘til it Laughs: Reflections on Jewish Humor”
Ruth R. Wisse, Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University
Professor Wisse discusses how (and why) Jews have been closely associated with comedy. Is Jewish comedy only about the laughs, or are the laughs part of a deeper engagement with politics? Wisse is the author of Jews and Power (2007), The Modern Jewish Canon (2000, winner of the National Jewish Book Award), If I Am Not for Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews (1992), I.L. Peretz and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture (1991), A Little Love in Big Manhattan: Two Yiddish Poets (1988), and The Shlemiel as Modern Hero (1971). She is also the editor of A Shtetl and Other Yiddish Novellas; The I.L. Peretz Reader; The Best of Sholem Aleichem; and The Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse.
Time: 4:30 pm
Location: Neilson Browsing Room
Sponsors: The Programs in Jewish Studies and Comparative Literature at Smith College. This lecture is part of the 2007-2008 Lecture Series in Jewish Studies: "Passages Home: Between History and Memory in Modern Jewish Culture. |
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Thursday, November 29, 2007
"'Lost' Between Memory and History: Writing the Holocaust for the Next Generation"
Daniel Mendelsohn
Daniel Mendelsohn is author of The Lost: A Search for Six of the Six Million (2006). This extraordinary book weaves together family memoir, detective work, oral history, and Biblical commentary to provide an epic tale and profound reflection about remembering and narrating the Holocaust. Mendelsohn holds a PhD in Classics from Princeton University, where he
was a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities. A frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and other publications, he holds numerous prestigious awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Jewish Book Awards, and the National Book Critics Circle. The author’s tale of world-wide travels to discover the facts about the wartime deaths of six close European relatives becomes just as important a search for the prewar lives of these individuals, an evocation of their eastern European Jewish community and culture, and a profound reflection on family, history, and memory--and the ties that bind and sustain despite all the ruptures. The Lost has received much attention and critical acclaim (New York Times Notable Book of the Year 2006, National Jewish Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award); it is a memoir/autobiography that speaks in novel and provocative ways to the meaning of the Holocaust and Holocaust “memory” for contemporary Jews, soon to be released in paperback. Read and listen to Daniel Mendelsohn's recent interview on NPR's "Fresh Air with Terry Gross."
Time: 7:30 pm
Location: Campus Center Carroll Room
Sponsors: Jewish Studies, German Studies, History, Religion and Comparative Literature at Smith College; the Smith College Lecture Committee; the Five College Lecture Fund;the Department of Spanish at Amherst College;the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at UMass, Amherst; the Jewish Studies Program at Mount Holyoke College; the Office of the Dean of the Faculty at Hampshire College; Smith/Amherst Hillel; the Five-College Slavic Seminar; the Jewish Arts and Culture Initiative of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation; the National Yiddish Book Center; the Hatikvah Holocaust Education Center. This lecture is part of the 2007-2008 Lecture Series in Jewish Studies: "Passages Home: Between History and Memory in Modern Jewish Culture.
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Monday, November 5, 2007
“‘I Have Not Told Half of What I Saw’: Isaac Rosenfeld, Saul Bellow, and New York Jewish Intellectuals"
Steven J. Zipperstein, Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History and Director of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies, Stanford University; and Visiting Professor, Harvard University, 2007
Essayist and novelist Isaac Rosenfeld was considered among the most promising of American Jewish writers during his brief lifetime (he died at the age of 38, in 1956). Coming of age in Chicago with his best friend, Saul Bellow, Rosenfeld was thought at first to be the better writer, and much of Bellow's work (Seize the Day, Henderson the Rain King, Humboldt's Gift) touches on, in one way or another, their intense, complex lifelong friendship. Professor Steven J. Zipperstein, an internationally renowned historian of Russian and East European Jewry, has just completed a biographical study of Rosenfeld based on extensive use of unpublished sources, including many thousands of letters, and six unpublished novels. In this lecture, Professor Zipperstein will discuss his book on Rosenfeld (forthcoming, Spring 2008) in the context of the larger framework of biographical study, and American Jewish cultural history. Professor Zipperstein is the author of several books, among them The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural History, 1794-1881 (1985, Smilen Prize); Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha’am and the Origins of Zionism (1993, National Jewish Book Award);and Imagining Russian Jewry: Memory, History, Identity (1999).
Time: 4:15 pm
Location: Neilson Browsing Room
Sponsors: The Programs in Jewish Studies and American Studies at Smith College. This lecture is part of the 2007-2008 Lecture Series in Jewish Studies: "Passages Home: Between History and Memory in Modern Jewish Culture. |
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Saturday, October 27, 2007
"Celebrate East" - a workshop with Loolwa Khazzoo
Loolwa Khazzoom is credited with pioneering the Jewish Multiculturalism movement in the 1990s. Her achievements include contributions to many well-known magazines. She is a founding member of the Tapestry, which describes itself as an organization that “provides the tools necessary for community leaders to shift from a limited European Jewish paradigm [in terms of their understanding of Jewish culture] to one that reflects the racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the global Jewish experience”. Khazzoom will lead a participatory music workshop called “Celebrate East” which will introduce ancient Jewish songs and prayers from the Middle East and North Africa, sung in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Judeo-Arabic. This workshop will also involve some basic Middle Eastern and North African drumming rhythms. All music taught at the workshop will be provided in transliteration so as to allow for the full participation of as many people as possible. Khazzoom’s workshop will expose people to the complex nature of Judaism by showcasing the rich variety of backgrounds that make up the culture, highlighting the similarities and differences between these lesser-known Jewish influences and the more mainstream Eastern-European Jewish culture. Sponsored by Smith Hillel and the Program in Jewish Studies at Smith College.
Time: 3:00-5:00 pm
Location: Helen Hills Hills Chapel |
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Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Presentation of the Major in Jewish Studies (for Smith students only)
Meet the faculty advisers in the Program, learn about courses offered,
requirements, study abroad options and more.
A light lunch will be served.
Time: 12:00 pm
Location: Seelye Hall 207 |
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March 10-31 , 2007
The Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival
a collaborative effort of more than 40 volunteers and professional staff from cultural, educational, religious, and community organizations across the Pioneer Valley. This year, organizers will offer films and related programs in Springfield, Northampton, Amherst, Holyoke, West Springfield, Chicopee, Greenfield and South Hadley. This spring the Festival will again offer a spectacular array of award-winning, entertaining films from around the world. Local filmgoers of all ages can enjoy compelling drama, comedy, documentary, and shorts from the best film festivals--right here in the Pioneer Valley. PVJFF offers, among other things, a temporary common ground where the community can learn, be inspired, and enjoy being together. The PVJFF runs for three weeks and includes discussions with filmmakers and other speakers, social receptions, art exhibits, and concerts. Film venues range from the Basketball Hall of Fame and the Showcase Cinema to the Smith College Museum of Art and the Pleasant Street Theatre. For full schedule and complete details visit the PVJFF website. |
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Wednesday, February 28, 2007
"Fashion, Human Rights and the Middle East: How Current Media Trends are Shaping the Work/Focus of the UN Human Rights Commission"
Jeffrey S. Robbins, Former United States Delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission
Jeffrey Robbins served as a United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland, having first been appointed to this position by President Clinton in March 1999 and then reappointed in March 2000. In 1997, he acted as Deputy Chief Counsel to the U.S. Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Special Investigation into campaign fundraising practices during the 1996 federal elections and as Chief Counsel to the Minority of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate. He is the former President of World Boston, and of the World Affairs Council of Boston. Mr. Robbins is a partner at Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, in Boston and practices in the Litigation Section. He practices in both federal and state courts, as well as before administrative tribunals. He served for three years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Massachusetts, during which time he focused on prosecuting civil fraud cases against defense and other government contractors. He is a member of the American, Massachusetts and Boston Bar Associations. He received his B.A. from Brown University (1978), and his J.D., cum laude, from Boston University School of Law (1982).
Time: 4:30 p.m.
Location: Seelye Hall 106, Smith College
Sponsored by Smith College Jewish Studies, Office of the Jewish Chaplain, Smith College Hillel, GAAPE, and the Middle East Studies Committee. |
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Tuesday, February 20, 2007
"Overlooking Overhearing a Rumor about the Jews in the Case of Little Hans: a Freudian Dilemma"
Jay Geller, Assistant Professor of Modern Jewish Culture, Vanderbilt University
After initially identifying the threat of castration as a likely, albeit deferred, cause of his patient Little Hans's symptoms, Sigmund Freud suddenly interrupts his discussion in "Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy" to append an extraordinary footnote on circumcision and antisemitism, castration and misogyny. More extraordinary, Freud's 1909 case study bears no other explicit sign of circumcision or anything else Jewish; indeed, from c. 1905 to 1918 Freud eschews all published mention of matters Jewish—with this one exception. In his lecture, Jay Geller attends to the very anomalousness of the note and its relationship to how Freud's text belied his attempts to represent Little Hans, once having overcome his phobia, as also having overcome his “homosexual impulses.
Time: 3:30 p.m.
Location: Seelye Hall 207, Smith College |
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Through January 2007
Jerusalem: Jewel of the Holy Land – An exhibit, prepared by students in the course REL 110: The Holy Land under the supervision of Prof Suleiman Ali Mourad, that portrays examples of the religious and secular presentations and representations of Jerusalem and the Holy Land throughout the centuries using books, pamphlets, and other materials from the Smith College Libraries collections. The exhibit was created with the assistance of Martin Antonetti (Curator of Rare Books Libraries, Nielson Library), Barbara Polowy (Art Librarian, Hillyer Art Library), and their staff and is sponsored by the Smith College Middle East Committee. More details are available at the Art Library website.
Location: Hillyer Art Library lobby, Brown Fine Arts Center, Smith College
Time: anytime during regular library hours
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Wednesday, September 13, 2006 - Is Peace Still Possible?
After a summer of hostilities, some still say “Yes” and continue to work for it. Discover how environmental co-operation in the
Middle East
continues in the face of the current Arab-Israeli conflict. Come and hear about the experiences of Palestinian, Israeli, Jordanian, and American alumni of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, Kibbutz Ketura. Panelists: Amer Sweity,
Amman;
Mohammed Atwa,
Gaza;
Rina Kedem,
San Francisco;
Ofer Margolit, Kibbutz Mishmar; HaSharon. Read more....
The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies is the premier environmental teaching and research program in the
Middle East
, preparing future Arab and Jewish leaders to cooperatively solve the region’s environmental challenges. The Arava Institute is a Smith approved Study Abroad option.
Location: Campus Center 205, Smith College
Time:
12:00 noon
Lunch provided
(
first come, first serv
ed)
Co-sponsored by the Smith College Jewish Studies Program, Environmental Science and Policy Program, Department of Government, the Office of the Jewish Chaplain, the Office of the Muslim Chaplain, Hillel and Al-Iman at Smith,the
Middle East
Committee, and the Office of International Study. |
Yosl Bergner
Destination X, 1969; click image to enlarge
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RETURNING: RECONSTRUCTING HOMELAND
April 20, 2006
A panel discussion of refugees and rights, nations and shelters, utopias and realities from Bosnia and Palestine to New Orleans and Yiddishland
PANELISTS:
Deborah Gans
Architecture Program, Pratt Institute, Gans/Jelacic, RA
Ms. Gans is principal in the firm of Gans & Jelacic in New York City. The firm's work in the fields of industrial design and architecture has been exhibited at RIBA, London; IFA, Paris; and the Van Alen Institute in New York City. The firm has won international awards and a grant for development from the Johnny Walker Fund for their investigation into disaster relief housing for Kosovar refugees and subsequent housing projects, and has received a HUD grant for a project in New Orleans. Ms. Gans is the author of The Le Corbusier Guide and the editor of The Organic Approach. She has taught at, among others, the Parsons School of Design, Columbia University, and Pratt Institute, where she was chair of the School of Architecture.
Justin Cammy
Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Comparative Literature at Smith College
Dr. Cammy is a specialist in Yiddish literature and Eastern European Jewish culture. He received his A.M. and Ph.D. from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. His research currently focuses on Yung-Vilne, the last group of young, politically engaged Yiddish poets, writers, and artists in inter-war Poland, and he is completing a literary and cultural history of the group called When Yiddish Was Young: Jewish Literature and Culture in the Lost Jerusalem of Lithuania. His translation from the Yiddish and introduction to Hinde Bergner’s memoir, On Long Winter Nights: Memoirs of a Jewish Family in a Galician Township, 1870-1900, appeared in 2005.
Aaron Berman
Professor of History and Vice President and Dean of Faculty, Hampshire College
Dr. Berman received his B.A. from Hampshire College, and M.A. and Ph.D. in United States history from Columbia University. He is particularly interested in the dynamics of ideology and politics, the development of the American welfare state, American ethnic history, American Jewish history, and the history of Zionism and the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is the author of Nazism, The Jews, and American Zionism 1933-1948.
Moderated by:
Rachel Rubinstein
Jewish and American Literature and Culture, Hampshire College
Location: Franklin Patterson West Lecture Hall, Hampshire College
Time:
7:
0
0pm
Part of
Art, Exile, Memory, an interdisciplinary series of speakers and events commenting on the experience of Jewish and other exiles and aesthetic responses to exile. The goal of the series is to bring together visiting scholars and artists,
Five
College
faculty, community members, and students for interdisciplinary discussions about exile and what it means today. Conversations roughly follow the trajectory of exile: Leaving, Arriving, Returning, Remembering. Hurricane Katrina has heightened our awareness of the presence of exile, diaspora, and refugees in our midst. Moreover, the looming fifth anniversary of September 11 will certainly provoke conversations about displacement, trauma, memory, and memorialization. Art, Exile, Memory will explore how a Jewish language of exile, diaspora, and memory - from the Bible through the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust – help define and frame these more recent experiences of violent uprooting and diaspora. And finally, it will explore the ways in which art redefines and reimagines the experience of exile.
Full Sche
dule
Sponsored by the Jeremiah Kaplan Family Foundation, the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, the School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies, European Studies, Amherst College Urban Imagination, Smith College Jewish Studies, University of Massachusetts Art and Art History Departments, the Weissman Institute at Mount Holyoke College, Five College, Inc. |
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Wednesday, April 5, 2006
The Israeli Elections: A Turning Point or a Point of No Return?
Donna Robinson Divine
Morningstar Professor of Jewish Studies
Department of Government, Smith College
Location: Seelye Hall 106, Smith College
Time:
4
:
3
0p
m
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Sunday, April 2, 2006
Hineini: Coming Out in a Jewish High School
Location: Stoddard Hall Auditorium, Smith College
Time:
7:
3
0pm
f
ilm showing, f
ollowe
d
b
y
"
Film Talk
s!"
with
film subject
Shu
lamit Izen,
'05
Beyond the struggle to create a supportive environment for gay and lesbian students and teachers at the school, this is the story of a community wrestling with the very definition of pluralism and diversity in a Jewish context. This timely film chronicles Shulamit Izen’s fight to start a gay-straight alliance at Gann Academy – the New Jewish High School of Greater Boston. Part of the Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival, March 19-April 9, 2006 |
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Wednesday, March 1, 2006
Writing the Conflict: Fiction from the Promised Land - A Reading and Discussion with Jon Papernick, author of The Ascent of Eli Israel
Papernick will discuss his fictional short stories set in Israel during the collapse of the Oslo Peace accords - a collection of tales of Americans caught up in the ethnic, religious, social, economic, and political conflicts of modern day Israel.
Location: Neilson Library Browsing Room, Smith College
Time: 7:30 pm
Part of the Contemporary Jewish Writers Lecture Series, sponsored by the Program in Jewish Studies and the Middle East Committee.
“Papernick's penetrating, clear-sighted stories ring true and yet they bring utterly no consolation. But who ever said that understanding would?” - The New York Times Book Review |
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Thursday, December 1, 2005
Writing into the Future: Diaries and the Holocaust
Alexandra Garbarini, Assistant Professor of History, Williams College; author of Under History's Wheel: Diary Writing and the Holocaust (forthcoming). Sponsored by the Programs in Jewish Studies and Comparative Literature.
Location: Seelye Hall 201
Time:
4
:
0
0pm
Professor Garbarini's talk is based on her book about Jewish diary writing and the Holocaust, Numbered Days: Diaries and the Holocaust (Yale University Press, 2006), the first sustained analysis by a historian of the significant ways in which diaries contribute to our understanding of the Holocaust. Drawing on an astonishing array of unpublished and published diaries from all over German-occupied Europe, Alexandra Garbarini analyzes the role of diary writing within these ordinary men and women's larger struggles to cope with the unimaginable genocide as it unfolded around them. As Garbarini narrates the individual stories of, among others, parents who wrote diaries for their children and the last remaining members of families who wrote for unknown readers in the outside world, she puts forward a new perspective on diary writing as a whole. In describing the variety of experiences of Jews in different geographical locations and in different periods, she renders more subtle our conception of the victims by opening up the range of perspectives they had on their predicaments. Perhaps most intriguing, she reveals the genesis of issues that would become central to postwar thought--especially, the struggle of diarists to articulate their experiences in writing, which anticipated scholars' later discussions about whether the Holocaust exceeds the possibility of representation. |
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Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Modernism in Tel Aviv: Cultural Invention and Urban Space
Barbara Mann, Associate Professor of Hebrew Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary in NYC.
This lecture and slide presentation is sponsored by the City Lives and City Life project of the Kahn Institute for Liberal Arts at Smith College.
Location: Graham Hall Auditorium
Time:
4
:
3
0pm
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Tuesday, November 8, 2005
"My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner"
Meir Shalev, celebrated best selling Israeli author, talks about the intersection of Ideology and Love...
Born in 1948 on Nahalal, Israel's first moshav, Meir Shalev is one of his nation's most important writers, and a columnist with the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot. He is the author of five novels translated into some twenty languages, three collections of literary essays, and seven works for children. Shalev's 1988 novel, The Blue Mountain, remains one of the top five best-selling works in Israeli publishing history. His fiction offers a kaleidescopic experience of life in Israel from the generation of early pioneers to the struggles of today.
This literary event is part of the Contemporary Jewish Writers Lecture Series and is sponsored by the Smith College Program in Jewish Studies, the Middle East Committee, the Program in Comparative Literature, Smith College and UMass Hillel; the Student Alliance for Israel (UMass), Hampshire College Jewish Studies; and generous grants from the Anna P. Housen Israel Desk of the Jewish Federation of Greater Springfield and the Arts and Culture Initiative of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation.
Location: Neilson Library Browsing Room
Time: 7:30 pm |
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Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Writing In Extremis: 'Oyneg Shabes,' The Secret Buried Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto
Samuel David Kassow, Charles H. Northam Professor of History, Trinity College
Location: Neilson Browsing Room
Time: 7:30pm
Sponsored by the Program in Jewish Studies, in conjunction with CLT 219 Holocaust Literature
Between 1940 and 1943 the Polish-Jewish historian Emanuel Ringelblum assembled an extraordinary group of men and women to document all aspects of Jewish life under the Nazi occupation. Called by its code-name Oyneg Shabes (The Joy of the Sabbath), this underground archive emerged as a major pillar of Jewish cultural resistance in Nazi occupied Europe. This lecture will discuss Emanuel Ringelblum and his place in the cultural history of East European Jewry.
Samuel Kassow, Charles H. Northam Professor of History at Trinity College, holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University, a Masters of Science from the London School of Economics and a BA from Trinity. The author of numerous articles and scholarly talks in English, Russian and Yiddish, Professor Kassow has also lectured and taught in Mexico, Lithuania, Russia and Poland. He has lectured extensively in Israel, including three lecture series at Kibbutz Lochamei Ha’Gettaot about the Holocaust. In 1993 and 1995 the Jewish Theological Seminary asked Professor Kassow to teach Jewish history in its Project Judaica program in Moscow. In 2002 he was a Visiting Professor at Princeton. Professor Kassow has also lectured extensively on the Middle East conflict and Zionism.
Professor Kassow has been a Lady Davis Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has held National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright, Woodrow Wilson and Danforth Fellowships and has been an IREX Fellow at Warsaw, Moscow and Leningrad Universities.
Professor Kassow is the author of Students Professors and the State in Tsarist Russia: 1884-1917 (University of California Press, 1989), The Distinctive Life of East European Jewry (YIVO, 2003) and a co-editor of Between Tsar and People (Princeton University Press, 1993). His book on Emanuel Ringelblum and the Secret Ghetto Archive will be published by Indiana University Press next year. A child of Holocaust survivors, Professor Kassow was born in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany. |
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Friday, September 23, 2005 Lecture
Heirs to the Promise: Abraham Among Jews, Christians and Muslims
Carol Bakhos, Late Antique Judaism and Jewish Studies, UCLA
Abraham plays an important yet significantly different role in the theological foundation of all three monotheisms—Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This talk will discuss the significance of this role in each tradition with an eye toward classical conceptions of Abraham’s descendants, Ishmael and Isaac, and the role they in turn play in each tradition.
Location: Seelye 201
Time: 12:10 pm
Sponsored by the Department of Religion, Program in Jewish Studies, Smith College Lecture Committee, Office of the Catholic Chaplin and Smith/Amherst Hillel. |
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Tuesdays September 13-December 6, 2005
CLT 218 Holocaust Literature Film Series
Full Schedule
Location: McConnell Auditorium
Time:
7:30pm
This film series is not open to the public (posted for CLT 218 student information only) |
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